Hamid Karzai

The young fruit-seller, buffing pale red pomegranates to a shine at a roadside stall, cannot remember a time before the war.

Mohammad Tayyeb was born the year the U.S. military stormed into his country. He does not know exactly why the foreign soldiers arrived in 2001, but when the war came to his family’s doorstep in the southern province of Helmand a few years later, they had to leave everything behind.

In the encampment for displaced people where they now live, on the fringes of the Afghan capital, Mohammad struggles to understand why a few thousand foreign troops still remain, fighting a conflict that seems to have no end. When he overhears relatives arguing...

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